金瓷 Golden Porcelain. An Intercultural Symphonic Present in the Metaverse to Commemorate China-Mexico Relations

THE CONTEXT
On February 14, 2022, Mexico and the Popular Republic of China celebrated 50 years of diplomatic relations. I received the commission to write a symphonic piece for the celebration, similar to the commission I carried out in 2019, for which I composed a piece celebrating seventy-five years of diplomatic relations between Mexico and Canada. I didn’t give it a second thought. Since graduating from a High School in Hong Kong, I’d always wanted to reconnect with China. This was a great chance to do so in a significant way.

The commission arrived in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. I hoped that the situation would’ve calmed when the work was done. I finished it in July 2022, in a hotel room in Qingdao, China, during the ten-day mandatory quarantine imposed on every traveler before entering the Asian giant. I arrived in China to take charge of the cultural section of the Mexican Embassy. Although the West had already stopped imposing health restrictions, Mao’s land had not.

As months passed, it became evident that the live premiere of the piece in China would be almost impossible in the pandemic context of the Eastern giant. As the anniversary came to an end, it was necessary to postpone the premiere until February 14, 2023 (reaching the 51^st anniversary). Since we didn’t know for sure when the sanitary measures in China would be lifted, it was imperative to find an option for premiering the piece that did not depend on the lifting of the restrictions.

THE CONCEPT
The piece has been named after the inherent relationship between Chinese porcelain and Mexican Talavera pottery. According to an essay published by the New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, “A vast quantity of Chinese export porcelain carried by galleons from Manila remained in New Spain and served as models for the potters in Puebla” (Hecht, 2003). Thus, the piece’s structure roughly represents the creation process of porcelain, which is very similar to that of Talavera ceramics, alluding to the historical connection between China and Mexico. The piece has four sections: Chinese water and stone; clay stamping; ceramic modeling and fire in the kiln, and an invigorating final section that represents the conclusion of the creation process. The “golden” part of the name commemorates the recently turned 50 years of diplomatic relations; it is essentially a “golden wedding” between China and Mexico.

In order to represent China with sound, I wrote the piece’s main theme using a pentatonic scale and took inspiration for some of its colors from The Map (2002) by acclaimed Chinese composer Tan Dun. To represent Mexico, that sound gradually transforms into a cumbia, a genre that, even though it isn’t originally Mexican, we have adopted as our own.

OACADEMY AND RECORDING IN THE METAVERSE
The solution to the health restrictions problem had come to me a year and a half earlier, when, also because of the pandemic, my piece Codex Mexica: Passion (commemorating 500 years since the fall of Tenochtitlan) had to be premiered online, recorded remotely by Yo-Yo Ma and musicians from the OAcademy, each from his own home. I also called animator Juan Blanco Villanueva of Ihtoa Games, a Mexican digital arts studio, to add a visual component to sound, with the intention that its cybernetic nature generated the most significant possible impact; you can see the result in https://oacademy.live/codex/. After this project’s success, I proceeded to replicate and optimize a similar scheme for the premiere of Golden Porcelain.

OAcademy Music Conservatory was created to reinvent the relationships between musical education and the demands of contemporary world (see box on p. XX of this issue). Its unique approach takes advantage of the power of learning between peers: it allows a student of Juilliard in New York and an emerging musician in Haiti, for example, to collaborate hand in hand in master classes with important international artists through technology. Its methodology allows an orchestral class with an outstanding conductor, a virtuoso workshop with a violin superstar, and an improvisation master class with a Grammy-winning jazz legend to be conducted remotely.

OAcademy welcomed the Golden Porcelain project with open arms, as it encompassed everything the conservatory promotes. Thanks to its platform and with support from the Colombian Youth Philarmonic and the Bolívar Davivienda Foundation, young musicians from twelve countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, China, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Germany, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Slovenia, Unites States, and Venezuela) participated in the creation of the piece.

The first step in the remote production of a musical piece is just the same as in a live premiere: the piece must be written, and individual parts are created for every musician. The second step poses a problem: How can we synchronize every musician if they aren’t sharing the same space? Current technology allows composers to create reliable orchestral models of our pieces. As a comparison, one can think of the models used by architects for their projects. The process is the following: 1) a model of the piece is created, 2) the model is sent to each musician, and 3) each musician records their own interventions listening to the model as a reference.

Not all musicians are trained to use Digital Audio Workstations (DAW) to record themselves. Therefore, training in an open-access DAW that did not present an extra cost for the interpreters was necessary. Audacity, an open-code and freely accessible software, was chosen since it fulfills the technical requirements needed for the project. Training in the program was given via Zoom by the composer in order to prepare the interpreters on home recording techniques. Alex Venguer— Mexican audio engineer who has participated in movies like Joker (Phillips, 2019) and was awarded a Grammy in 2010 for his work in the album High, Wide & Handsome: The Charlie Pool Project of American musician Loudon Wainwright III (2009)—joined the project to assist on this training. Later on, Venguer would also participate in the project as a mixer.

Once the musicians were trained, each one recorded their interventions at home. They were then sent to the composer. Once approved, he consolidated all the sections into a single track for each musician. Each of these tracks, known as stems, was sent to the mixer, whose job is to put each instrument in its place in the sound space and to make the total ensemble sound like an orchestra in the concert hall.

THE VISUAL COMPONENT
Once the sound component was ready, it was essential to add a visual component that contributed to the cybernetic nature of the piece. To do so, I invited Mexican conceptual artist David Roubaud, who gladly joined the project.

We worked together to create a mural painting with moments in Sino-Mexican history, which also represented conceptually the relationship between Mexican Talavera pottery and Chinese porcelain. I suggested Roubaud to get inspiration from the work of the great Mexican muralists of the 20^th century, especially Diego Rivera, who visited the People’s Republic of China in 1954.

Highlights of the mural include galleons of the Nao de China, representing the trade route between China and Mexico during Colonial times; a ship showing the prowess of the Ming dynasty in the exploration of East and Southeast Asia; Taishan mountain next to Popocatepetl; El Colegio de Mexico, where the first historical exchange between scholars of the two nations took place; terracotta soldiers next to Cocijo, Zapotec god of rain; and Ying Ying and Pe Pe, the pandas that China gave to Mexico in 1975. Once the components of the mural painting were defined, Roubaud animated his painting in synchrony with the music, making its creation more dynamic and transforming the piece into a multimedia product.

The piece premiered online on February 14, 2023. You can see and listen to the multimedia production at https://youtu.be/dXgI8vaGJuA?si=sGxA8vkdt6CPgD2h. The project was received with enthusiasm by China and Mexico. Later on, in August, the piece premiered live in Nezahualcóyotl Hall with the Minería Symphony Orchestra conducted by Carlos Miguel Prieto.

This project exemplifies how technology allows us to collaborate in ways that would have been impossible in another time. I do not mean to argue that the audiovisual version of the piece equates to its live version; it’s simply another artistic iteration made with replicable, accessible, and equitable processes, which can help artists distribute their work with greater impact.

Special thanks to Jesús Seade, Dalcy Cabrera y Carla Villalobos.

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